Monday, March 17, 2008

Right now I am super-excited . One of the ladies who has worked at the youth center forever became a Christian this weekend. People have been sharing the gospel with her for years and she has believed in Jesus for a while, but she didn’t want to give up her sacrifices and ceremonies, so she hadn’t given her heart to God. She has five kids, the oldest of which are teenagers, and her husband died a few years ago.

She was really sick and in the hospital this past week and when she got back she told one of our friends here that she had decided to give her life to Jesus. He talked to her for a while and she seemed really confident about it. She wasn’t back at work today because she is still recovering, but I am going to go visit her soon.

It is not that common for someone her age to become a Christian here because by that point most people are really involved in doing the ceremonies for themselves and for their families and they are responsible for the sacrifices for their children, etc.

I can’t even imagine the freedom after more than 40 years of living in fear of Satan. I also can’t imagine how hard it would be to walk away from your entire way of life. She has been released from the promises and pacts she has made with Satan. She has a God that she can know and who wants to know her. Wow! Ok, so like I said I am super excited.

On a different note, we only have three weeks left here, which is totally unbelievable to me… Seriously, where did the time go this time?

When we leave here we have a layover in Frankfurt, Germany. While we were booking the tickets the agent told us that the price of the ticket didn’t change if the layover was a few hours or a month, so we opted for a longer one so that we could see a little bit of Europe. We have 19 days and we are planning on spending most of the time in Germany with a quick trip to Salzburg, Austria and Prague in the Czech Republic. I am sure we’ll take lots of pictures and Jason might even post a movie or two

Over the past few weeks we have mostly been working. Jason taped some cool new language videos (like the Fula one), but he hasn’t had a chance to edit them yet. We did visit one of our friends, Roberta, on her son’s first birthday so I thought I would share some pictures of that with you.

Here’s me with the birthday boy, Meno. He was in a really good mood and for some reason I made him laugh a lot.

He really liked it when we put our heads together. He would laugh and then squeal and wiggle. I can’t really convey the cuteness in a picture, but trust me, it was adorable.

We have gotten to be friends with our neighbors here, Charlotte, and Salva. This past Friday night we went to a concert with them and we had a good time. Charlotte is from France and she is teaching and supervising teachers at a French school here in Bissau. (She studied English in college and then went to Portugal for a few years and taught there, so she speaks French, Portuguese, English, and now Creole.) Salva is her boyfriend and he is a doctor from Spain. He has spent some time in Portugal, and I’m not really sure where else, but he speaks good English too. At the concert we were joined by another French woman, her Guinean boyfriend, and three people from Spain. It’s so funny to be from all over and have Creole as a common language.

Charlotte and Salva had an oyster baking party today so we stopped over and had a few. Correction, I had a few, Jason ate about 40. They had a huge bag full of them, and they went down to the port to buy them, so they were fresh and pretty cheap. I took a few pictures and I thought I would share them with you guys.

I know this picture is a little blury, but if you look at the right side of this oyster you can clearly see the letters USA... We really have no idea how it got there, but when Charlotte opened it up, there it was. Weird!

This is Charlotte about to start munching some party food.

One of the benefits of living near the ocean – big shrimp. They were pretty good too! You just take off the head with the guts, peel off the shell and legs and pop them in your mouth!

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About Me

I am a missionary in Guinea-Bissau (West Africa) and I love it. I don't really enjoy change, and since life is different everyday here, sometimes that can get to me. Many times the hardest things in life are the best and even though living overseas is hard, I can't imagine doing anything else right now.